Trump Says He Predicted Osama Bin Laden. He Didn’t.

Another whopper from the GOP front-runner.

<a href=http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-GOP-2016-Trump/e07c26df21984dd0854ebb729c2bb520/14/1>John Locher</a>/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump, the GOP presidential front-runner, appeared on the internet-based talk show of Alex Jones, a so-called 9/11 truther who promulgates a wide variety of wild conspiracy theories. Jones heaped praise on Trump for being a modern-day George Washington who could save this nation before it falls into utter ruin in the next few years, and he begged Trump to vow that he will not pull out of the race (even under pressure from dark globalist forces). Trump, for his part, also heaped praise on Trump.

In touting his own national security credentials, Trump pointed to a book he published in 2000 called The America We Deserve. He noted that in this work, he brilliantly foresaw the threat posed by Osama bin Laden:

I said in that book that we better be careful with this guy named Osama bin Laden. I mean I really study this stuff. I really find it very interesting, even though I am a businessman…I said we better be careful with Osama bin Laden. There’s a guy named Osama bin Laden. Nobody really knew who he was. But he was nasty. He was saying really nasty things about our country and what he wants to do to it. And I wrote in the book [in] 2000—two [sic] years before the World Trade Center came down—I talked to you about Osama bin Laden, you better take him out. I said he’s going to crawl under a rock. You better take him out. And now people are seeing that, they’re saying, “You know, Trump predicted Osama bin Laden.” Which actually is true.

Really? Trump, in a 2000 book, fingered bin Laden as a primary threat who had to be neutralized, and he did this before others saw the Al Qaeda leader as a danger?

Okay, by now you know where this is heading. In the Kindle version of this book, there is no index. But according to the search function, there is only one—yes, just one—brief reference to Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda in the entire book. Here it is:

Instead of one looming crisis hanging over us, we face a bewildering series of smaller crises, flash points, standoffs, and hot spots. We’re not playing the chess game to end all chess games anymore. We’re playing tournament chess—one master against many rivals. One day we’re all assured that Iraq is under control, the UN inspectors have done their work, everything’s fine, not to worry. The next day the bombing begins. One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.”

That’s it. Nothing prescient. Nothing that was not known publicly at the time. Nothing about putting bin Laden on the top of the national security to-do list. In the book’s opening chapter, Trump did note, “I really am convinced we’re in danger of the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the [1993] bombing of the Trade Center look like kids playing with firecrackers.” But he did not connect this to bin Laden. And in the book’s short chapter on terrorism, Trump had no mention of bin Laden or Al Qaeda. He focused instead on the terrorist threat—such as a “biobomb”—posed by the governments of Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea. And he proposed “The (Trump) National Security Lottery,” which “would sell tickets just like in a Powerball Lottery, but dedicate every cent to funding an anti-terrorism campaign.”

So Trump is wrong. In this book, he did not predict the rise of bin Laden. He and his co-writer were simply riffing off the clips of the day.

Not surprisingly, Jones did not call out Trump on this. Instead, he cheered on the tycoon and said Trump’s campaign is “epic.” Trump repaid the compliment. As the segment was ending, he told Jones, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate